Monday, June 19, 2017

Book Note: Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief

Vogel, Paula. Desdemona: A Play about a Handkerchief. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1994.
I came across this play only recently, but it's been around for a while.

It's a retelling of Othello with only three roles: Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca.

It's also a retelling in which Desdemona has been unfaithful to Othello—and with a large number of men (though possibly not with Cassio). She has had affairs here and there, but she also has an arrangement with the prostitute Bianca to take her place occasionally without anyone being the wiser. By that means, she's also slept with Iago.

I don't know quite what to make of the play. Is Desdemona's "free love—exceptionally free love" approach to sex and marriage meant to empower her? Is this an attempt to avoid the quasi-virginal placement of Desdemona provided by many productions of Othello? Is this a humorous re-imagining of what Othello is afraid Desdemona actually is, as in "I had been happy, if the general camp, / Pioners and all, had tasted her sweet body, / So I had nothing known" (III.iii.397-99)?

My own sense is that it's humorous, but it's also quite Desdemeaning.

[Sorry. I should have resisted.]

It does seem to be demeaning rather than empowering. I'll give you a quick sample from Scenes 9, 10, and 11. Scene 11 is the most clearly connected to Shakespeare's play: it's a reversal of IV.iii, with Desdemona taking on some of Emilia’s positions and vice versa:

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